Uber says collecting location data is essential to allow the company to connect drivers to riders and for features like ‘split fare’.
Photograph: Robert Galbraith/Reuters

Regulators are being urged to investigate Uber over the taxi app company’s controversial plan to track its customers’ locations – even when they’re not using the service – and harvest details of their contacts.

Campaigners at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (Epic) on Monday filed a complaint with the The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) claiming that forthcoming changes to Uber’s privacy policy “threaten the privacy rights and personal safety of American consumers”, “pose a direct risk of consumer harm” and “constitute an unfair and deceptive trade practice”.

Epic said the changes, due to come into effect on 15 July, will let Uber collect precise location data of its customers “even after an app has been terminated by the user”.

Uber also plans to access users’ address books and collect names and contact information. The new policy states: “If you permit the Uber app to access the address book on your device through the permission system used by your mobile platform, we may access and store names and contact information from your address book to facilitate social interactions through our Services and for other purposes described in this Statement or at the time of consent or collection.”

Uber said it wanted access to customers’ address book so that it could “launch new promotional features that use contacts – for example the ability to send special offers to riders’ friends or family”.

“There is no basis for this complaint. We care deeply about the privacy of our riders and driver-partners and have significantly streamlined our privacy statements in order to improve readability and transparency,” an Uber spokesperson said in a statement. “These updated statements don’t reflect a shift in our practices, they more clearly lay out the data we collect today and how it is used to provide or improve our services.”

Following public outcry at the announcement, Uber’s head of privacy Katherine Tassi said: “We care deeply about the privacy of our riders and drivers”.

She said collecting location data was essential to allow the company to connect drivers to riders and “features like ‘split fare’ [in which friends can share the cost of journeys] only work if Uber has access to a rider’s contact details”.

“In addition, these changes would allow Uber to launch new promotional features that use contacts – for example the ability to send special offers to riders’ friends or family,” she said. “In either case, users will be in control: they will be able to choose whether to share the data with Uber.”

However, Epic said forcing users to figure out how to opt-out of the new features “places an unreasonable burden on consumers and is not easy to exercise”.

“In less than four weeks, Uber will claim the right to collect personal contact information and detailed location data of American consumers, even when they are not using the service,” the Epic complaint said. “These changes ignore the FTC’s prior decisions, threaten the privacy rights and personal safety of American consumers, ignore past bad practices of the company involving the misuse of location data, pose a direct risk of consumer harm, and constitute an unfair and deceptive trade practice subject to investigation by the Federal Trade Commission.”